Some language issues are actually historic ones. This also applies to the "Arabic numbers". Why are they called that?
What is being referred to are the numbers 0 to 9.
Originally, Roman numerals were used in Germany, adopted along with the Latin script.
They used the letters I, V, X, L, D und M for the numbers 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 und 1000. Today they have been relegated to clocks, statues, and other lexical niches, such as the ranking of rulers and popes.
In Germany it was Adam Riese, the math master from Staffelstein in Upper Franconia, who pushed Roman numerals out of arithmetics in Germany. His book 'Rechnen auf der Linihen und Federn' (1522), written in German, went through 120 editions until the 17th century. His fame lives on in the German expression "according to Adam Riese" ("nach Adam Riese" = “calculated correctly”).
Contrary to what its name suggests, the origins of our current number system can be found in the ancient Indian Brahmi script of the 3rd century BC with numbers from 1 to 9. The symbol 0 for zero was added to it in 628 by the Indian astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta.
The Arab conquest of northern India and Persia led to the adoption of this system in the Arab world.
When and how it reached the occident is controversial. It is said that a monk named Gerbert (later Pope Sylvester II) took it on in Catalonia in the 10th century.
Another hypothesis names the Italian Leonardo Fibonacci, who learned of the Arab numbers in Algeria and introduced them in his work 'Liber abaci' (1202). He called them Indian numbers.
It owed its success to the fact that, if it came to higher arithmetics, the "new" number system was far superior to the Roman five-fold system and therefore its quick conquest of many countries was just a matter of time. Whoever introduced it to the West, the originally Indian numerals made its way into Europe via the Arab world which is the reason why they are still called Arabic numbers to this day.
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